


Lullaby

by Erinya



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Genre: F/M, Folk Music, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-21
Updated: 2006-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 15:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinya/pseuds/Erinya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack has nightmares after he returns from the Locker.  Elizabeth comforts him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> For Swell, who requested Jack and Lizzie and a lullaby.

Jack suffers from nightmares these days, dreadful ones that make him thrash and cry out like he's being rent apart, and Elizabeth thinks she knows of what he dreams and that she's at fault for it. She holds onto him, says his name against his skin again and again, calling him back, until he hears her at last and jerks awake, shaking and trying to hide it. _You were dreaming_ , she tells him, and he grunts, noncommittal, burying his face in her, stroking her breasts and thighs and sex urgently, as if to reassure herself that she's real, that he's awake or perhaps that he's alive and not Kraken-swallowed. She draws him to her, into her, drags her nails down his back and over the ridged scars of long-ago lashings; he groans deep in his throat, more like a growl than anything else, and calls her by all his names for her: _Elizabeth. Lizzie. Bess. Love..._ and she answers, _yes. I'm here. I'm here._

If he can't sleep after their coupling, she gathers him into her arms, his head pillowed on her breast, and sings to him. She thinks she hasn't much of a voice; but tuneless or not it seems to soothe him, and when she stops he tells her not to, petulant like the small boy he must have been, once, and whom she can only imagine at these particular moments, when it's dark and they are alone and naked, having left their masks and costumes at the door, or, often, strewn about the floor of the cabin. She sings old lullabies her nurse used to sing, in another country, in another life, to an Elizabeth whom the Elizabeth-of-now barely remembers. _Lu lie, lu lay_ , and _while the moon her watch is keeping_ , and _hush, hush, my child_ , and when she runs out of proper lullabies she moves on to _oh the oak and the ash_ and _young Tam Lin_ , for her nurse had been Scottish. _Fair Janet_ , he calls her then, with a slow, sleepy smile, and she knows he hasn't far to go to rest.

Finally, he falls asleep; but she stays awake for a time, keeping watch over his dreams and still humming softly to herself-- _Janet has kilted her green kirtle_ \--touching her lips to his forehead when he stirs restlessly against her. And while she does, the nightmares do not trouble him again.


End file.
